California's Lake Fire Burns Massive 'Scars' into Forest (Photo)

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California's four-year-long drought is helping fuel its first
major forest fire of the year, a blaze that is engulfing federal
land about 80 miles (130 kilometers) east of Los Angeles. A NASA
satellite captured the smoky scene from orbit, revealing the
extent of the so-called Lake fire.

As of Tuesday (June 23), the fire had engulfed at least 27 square
miles (70 square kilometers) of the San Bernardino National
Forest. The fire was first reported on June 17, but local
officials do not yet know the cause of the blaze. Around 500
structures are
threatened by the flames, but none have been damaged or
destroyed. Only 30 percent of the fire is currently contained,
according to InciWeb, an interagency risk incident information
management system run by the United States Forest Service

The satellite images were taken on Saturday (June 20), when the
fire had burned about 23 square miles (60 square km) and was just
10 percent contained. The photos were snapped by the Advanced
Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.
[ Earth
from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit ]

In the natural-color image, a dense, white cloud of smoke can be
seen blanketing San Bernardino National Forest. This same scene,
when viewed in the short-wave infrared spectrum — which can peer
through dense smoke to see the ground below — reveals
burn scars and active fires that are normally obscured.

There are currently 118 fire engines, four air tankers, 17
helicopters, four support planes, 44 crews and 1,932 people on
the scene to fight the fire, InciWeb reported. Local officials
estimate it will cost at least $6.8 million to contain the
wildfire, the
Los Angeles Times reported.

The Lake fire is burning with low intensity, allowing
firefighters to safely approach and subdue the flames, which are
concentrated near the Coon Creek campground within a pine forest.
according to InciWeb.

The fire started last week and quickly spread up the mountains,
reaching elevations of 6,000 to nearly 10,000 feet (1,830 to
3,050 meters), where the ground is normally damp from storms and,
in some cases, even dusted with snow,
reported the Los Angeles Times.

"At higher elevation, normally you would have cooler temperatures
and your rain and snow would linger longer into the spring or
early summer," Lee Beyer, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman, told
the LA Times. "That's definitely not the case this year."

William Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in La Cañada Flintridge, said that the hot, dry conditions are
the result of a meteorological ridge, which is a long region of
high atmospheric pressure. It "makes a dry situation an
incendiary situation. We expect June gloom, we don't expect these
crushing high-pressure systems which are more usual in late
summer, fall," he told the LA Times. "This is all part of the
drought."